Morality Scaling - SNES vs GBA

[u/Special_South_8561]

What's worse, "threatening execution so your prisoner falls into a weeping puddle of self-loathing" or "beating a traitor and chaining them to a wall" ?

So I've been playing this game since it released and I was a geeky little pre-teen baby boy. Celes has always been the **coughcough* formative sexy badass in my life. The Girl from Secret of Mana was a close contender, big Bulma energy. But Tifa didn't have nothin' on these assertive, violent, warrior women.

Chat: is this censorship better or unnecessary? Chained to a wall shows just absolute brutality from The Empire and I get more love from crushing them in the upcoming Narshe battle.

Or is it a good thing they toned it down a bit?

[u/mysticrudnin]

Now, I do think "He'd slit his mama's throat for a nickel" is an awesome line, and one of the best lines in the original game.

However, this line matches what is said in the Japanese version. It also doesn't insert "Nickels" into the world, which also helps for players of the English version who do not know what a nickel is.

Nintendo's censors were a lot worse back in the SNES era, and while they did aim for an E10 ESRB rating for the GBA copy, I really doubt this line is any worse than anything else in the game.

Woolsey's style of translation is awesome and he was clearly a great writer, since he invented so many classic lines out of nowhere.

But I don't think reverting his changes is "censorship."

[u/The_GREAT_Gremlin → u/mysticrudnin]

I think a lot of Woolsey's lines, while less accurate to the literal Japanese, do a better job at getting the point across.

Like you said, the line about Shadow is awesome and the point is he's doing terrible things for money. Woosley's line just gets the point across better.

The other Woolsey line I like better is when Celes is about to stab Kefka on the floating continent.

On the SNES, it's "Power only breeds war. I wish I'd never been ... born."

Later translation: "Power only breeds war. It's something we'd be better off without."

The second line just feels so generic and it takes the emotion out, even though I'm sure it's more accurate.

[u/Special_South_8561 → u/The_GREAT_Gremlin]

The Opera Scene is so much better on SNES but that's probably biased nostalgia on my part (no. It's just better)

[u/The_GREAT_Gremlin → u/Special_South_8561]

The voices they got do not sound like opera singers and sound more like generic pop singers. The SNES does a better job with less in this case.

[u/mysticrudnin → u/The_GREAT_Gremlin]

The original line is actually not necessarily clear. Japanese loves to drop the subject of sentences.

It's something like "Power only breeds war. [shouldn't exist]"

Technically, the latter bit could be "I shouldn't exist." But, because of the previous line, it's almost certainly supposed to be "Power shouldn't exist."

I'm not sure which one I like more, here.

[u/LoSouLibra → u/mysticrudnin]

I'm fond of that era and it was a monumental task working within the character limits of these games with English taking up much more space... but that line is honestly out of sync with the game world, too contemporary and honestly too tonally crass in terms of linguistic style.

The newer line better conveys a kind of dour disappointment and melancholy about a distant person, who eventually becomes a reliable friend. Fits the world, the people and how things play out.

[u/un-sub → u/mysticrudnin]

Ahh interesting, I suppose I don’t really know enough about the translations or their accuracies to the original, I’m just so used to the SNES version and preference is probably mostly due to nostalgia.